The Pan Book of Horror Stories

A FRAGMENT OF FACT Chris Massie

Starting from my home in Whitby, with the fanatical enthusiasm of youth I had traced out a cycling itinerary which would keep me in touch with the sea round the walls of England until I reached Blackpool, and from there I proposed to cut through the hills back home to Yorkshire.

Embarking on this ambitious programme, I found myself one evening, between the hours of ten and eleven, cycling through the flat country of the sea reaches at the mouth of the Thames. While it was yet light, I had had fully communicated to me the melancholy desolation of that bog-held situation, heightened by the weird cries of some marsh bird I did not recognize.

The day had become sticky with heat: a sullen, breathless atmosphere which made cycling a conscious effort. Sweat oozed from my hair down my forehead, and past my ears, to trickle down the open neck of my cricket shirt. The journey was uncomfortable and uninteresting and, having taken a long bypath route, there was nothing much on the way to engage my attention.

When night fell, I had hoped for cooler conditions, being so near the sea and the river; but as is not unusual following such days, the night air became closer and more menacing. The air was so dense it seemed I was cutting through a solid surface; and indeed the conditions were something like this, for a low, clinging mist had come up from the marshland, and I could not see more than a few yards away by the light of my lamp.

I might have made the journey without considerable discomfort had I not become intolerably thirsty; but it was too late for an inn to be open, had I encounter one, which did not seem likely on this inhospitable bypath.

Growing weary of pedalling and feeling the need of sleep as well as drink, I got off my bike and made my progression on foot. On either side of me stretched miles of dangerous bogland and, though closed in by the mist, I was fully aware of the treacherous, naked countryside through which I was passing.

Now I was on foot travelling slowly; the sticky, warm mist seemed to impede my path by definite resistance. I was tired, thirsty, sleepy, and uncertain of my whereabouts. It was a source of considerable irritation to me that I was almost in touch with the most populous city in the world where every comfort might be obtained at any hour, and yet, for the predicament I was in, I might have been lost in the Sahara.

I plodded on feeling very stupid, regretting the foolhardy presumption which had turned night into day, and overtaxed my endurance. I reflected irritably on the folly of taking bypaths in a fantastically situated country like England. For the time I deplored my solitude. I had made similar tours with one or more companions, but had found that, however amiable company might be, two ideas were not better than one on the road. Arguing at cross roads had a mean and spoiling effect on a cycling holiday. But the situation was getting on my nerves. I am one of those peculiar people who are not comfortable in wide, flat, open spaces; and though at this hour I could not see the dreary prospect, being closed in by the mist, I could feel it in every nerve of my body.

‘I don’t suppose there’s a house round here for miles,’ I was thinking, when to my great relief I could see through the mist a bright patch to the right of the road which indicated, high up, the window of a lighted room.

I pushed on anxiously in the direction, and was soon aware that the light came from a house standing some distance back off the bypath which was approached by a wooden gate which I opened and against which I rested my bicycle.

The way up to the house was hedged on either side by some tall evergreen. It was perhaps fifty yards to the main door, and such is the peculiarity of the abominable torture set up by thirst, that now I was within sight of quenching it, my sufferings from that cause were inconceivably intensified. What if I should fail to get a drink after all? On that short journey I dwelt on pints, quarts, gallons of ice-cold water from a deep well, and in imagination I was quaffing greedily.

As I drew near, I saw the head and shoulders of a man, enormously magnified, pass across the window blind. The shadow had a downward projection, as if he had made al sudden sweeping movement to the floor. I rang a queer, old-fashioned bell which had to be pulled out and let go. A swift peal clattered through the house, which subsided with the lessening vibration to one or two isolated sounds before it ceased altogether.

I stood there, self-conscious, foolish; remembering having made a similar request for water when a child, and how graciously I had been received by a good woman, and accommodated with two juicy apples to follow my I refreshing swill. But I was a young man now and the hour was late.

There was no stir in response to my ringing. Impatient and desperate with my need, I rang again, and listened once more for those last, halting reverberations. This time I had succeeded. A foot was on the stair. A moment later the door opened, and a voice out of the darkness, for there was no light in the hall, asked, “What do you want?”

“I have been held up in the mist,” I replied. “I am very thirsty and would be glad of a drink of water.”

The man stood for a moment as if in deep thought. It was then I noticed his enormous proportions, not only in height but girth and shoulder span. He was well over six feet tall even in the attitude in which he stood, with head bowed and shoulders humped. His long arms hung in dragging, helpless fashion at his sides, like an ape’s.

“Come in,” he said. “Come into the light.”

I followed him, and he touched a door and said, “Go and wait for me in there. I will be back again soon with what you want.”

The room I walked into was only feebly lit, giving a twilight effect. It was a large room, but very barely furnished. Though it was obviously a dining or sitting room, a deal table took the centre of the room, and there were three Windsor chairs in various positions. There were no pictures, and nothing of comfort and pleasure in the apartment. I thought by this evidence that the house was unoccupied and that the man I had seen was the caretaker.

He returned in a few moments holding a heavy bowl in both hands, and as I was still standing in the middle of the room, he brought it straight forward and placed it in my hands, so that now I was holding it in precisely the manner he had done a moment before. It was an enormous drinking vessel despite the thirst which oppressed me. I looked down into the water, and saw round the edges at the bottom a dark stain that might have been a sediment of mud.

At that moment I looked up at him in my vexation, and in the dim light I saw his face. The huge size of the man suggested the lineaments of a gorilla, and I expected to be revolted by his appearance; but he was not like that at all. He wore a beard which to the worst of faces adds a venerable sort of dignity. His brows were heavy and overhanging, so that his eyes were invisible in these cavernous projections. His nose was long, with a melancholy downward depression, and his mouth hidden beneath a drooping moustache.

“This must have been a mistake,” I said, indicating the water.

At once he reached out with his immense hands and took the bowl away from me. Without a word of explanation he left the room, and I could hear him descending stairs.

I was alarmed, and inclined to make my escape from the house in his absence, for I had noticed, as the bowl swung round in his hands, the word DOG on its glazed earthenware surface.

In the state of thirst which tortured me, I was appalled that this unmannered giant should be so lacking in all human consideration as to offer me a dog’s trough from which to drink. And not a clean one. But he had returned before I could come to a decision, and this time he was bearing a jug and a half pint tumbler.

He set them on the table in front of me, and invited me to sit down. When I had done so, he sat down opposite me on the other side of the table. He looked across at me in the dim light and made this extraordinary statement: “Between your first ringing at the bell and your second my wife died. I was attending to her upstairs. That will explain my delay in coming down to you.”

The words were uttered simply, as a matter of course, in a deep but gentle voice with unexpected culture in its phrasing.

For the moment I had nothing to reply. Between the first ringing and the second I had been thinking of that good woman who, when I was a child, had supplemented a cooling drink with two juicy apples; and precisely at that moment a woman had died. This, for some unknown reason, seemed to invest the information with a special horror. I felt myself a most insolent intruder.

“I humbly beg your pardon,” I said, getting up. “That is most terrible news. I ought not to have blundered into the house in this fashion. I will be going now, and thank you for your hospitality.”

He stood up when I did, and with a quick movement preceded me to the door, lifting his hand in a manner which suggested I should be seated again.

“Don’t go,” he said. “I am glad of your company. There is no one else in the house. And I’m not used to this kind of thing. Perhaps it is a trifle unusual in a man of my age, but this is the first time I have seen death happen to . . . to a human being. . . . It so happens that her dog died only this morning.”

“And your wife has died almost immediately after the dog?” I asked for no particular reason.

“Yes,” he replied. “My wife was very fond of it; indeed, she idolized it.”

“Was your wife’s death sudden? I mean, were you expecting it?” I asked.

“Yes, I was expecting it. Both my wife and the dog were very ill.” He hesitated a moment then continued, “When I say I expected it, I was not expecting it at that moment although she was so ill. I had been intent on her condition, trying to make her position in the bed more comfortable, when I heard your first ring. My mind wandered at the psychological moment. It’s often so. At the psychological moment we are not there; our minds are floating about in time. That is life’s illusion; so much of it is lost in ranging back over the past or trying to explore the future. Then we look at death, and it is all over.”

His remarks were too metaphysical and self-conscious for me to answer. I merely nodded and sat down again. It was ridiculous to stand in the middle of the room and listen to such conversation. He also returned to his chair.

“Between your first ring and your second, she died,” he went on. “I had been nursing both of them. I mean I was attending the sick dog up to the moment when it died.”

“What sort of dog was it?” I asked.

“A sheepdog,” he replied. “One of those grey-black, shaggy fellows with the peculiar white-ringed eyes that seem blind, but are far from being so.”

“Oh yes,” I replied casually, but I was suddenly oppressed by a breathtaking sensation of unreality.

He sat before me in idle helplessness, observing me occasionally, and then turning a glance towards the door.

“When the dog died, it was impossible to deceive her about it,” he went on. “At all times of the day, she asked where it was, and implored me to bring it to her. It’s lying there now, at the foot of the bed.”

“Do you mean that your wife is dead, and lying at her feet is a dead dog?” I asked. He had just said that, but the picture it brought to my mind was horrifying in the extreme.

“She made me place it there,” he said. “Her wish was that they should be placed in the same coffin.”

“But no undertaker on earth——” I began.

“I know,” he replied. “I know. But it was her last wish, and I cannot bring myself to bury the dog. I cannot sum up sufficient courage to take it away from her feet.”

“Don’t you think,” I asked, for the situation was worrying me, “don’t you think you ought to be upstairs with her instead of here, if only to make sure she’s dead? . . . And really I must go; I have an appointment.”

Another thing had occurred to me.

“You ought to go for a doctor,” I told him. “Shall I call on the first doctor I come across on my way? What’s the name of this house?”

He made no reply at once, then he said, “I must think the matter over carefully. You have no idea what it is like to live in this lonely situation. It was no more than a bond to keep them together until they died. Why should I go upstairs again? I have done my part. I shall be going to the village tomorrow as I have always gone, to get the meat and vegetables, and I may call on a doctor then.”

“May!” I almost screamed. “You simply must!”

“Must, then,” he concurred.

“I’m sorry,” I said. The words seemed particularly futile, utterly absurd.

He did not reply. He was resting his head on his hands, with his elbows on the table.

“I must be going now,” I said. “Thank you for the drink.”

Again he did not reply or even look up. I passed out of the room into the dark passage, and very quietly opened the front door and closed it after me. I dashed down through the dark evergreens, and jumped on my bicycle. As I was getting up speed, I heard the pad of feet and a snarling behind me. The next moment the heavy bulk of a big animal caught me broadside on and nearly unseated me. As the handles swung, my lamp was brought round to the creature’s face, and I saw a pair of savage eyes. It was a sheepdog.

He came at me again, and lifting my foot from the pedal, I jabbed at his nose with my heel; but it was a push rather than a kick, and he was not hurt. He bared his teeth and leapt at my handlebars, and the lamp, coming off its fittings, dropped in the road and went out; but he had fallen without getting a grip of me. Before he had completely recovered, I rode on, and for a mile I heard him pattering behind.

“That must have been another sheepdog,” I reflected.

An involuntary shudder shook me so that I swerved on my bicycle; but this was not an account of my affray with the dog, but because that strange man with the unkempt hair and beard looked so much like a sheepdog himself.

I did not tell my story to anyone until I reached home. It has remained with me ever since, and from time to time I turn it over in my mind in an effort to clarify and rationalize it; but it remains insoluble.